The Masticator was started by two Minneapolis-area visionaries as a zine in the summer of 2004. Issue two was never realized, and half of its founding force moved to Brooklyn. Three years later, the electronic version of The Masticator has far eclipsed its single print-bound predecessor. Today, The Masticator posts art reviews, random urban snapshots, gentle political mockery, and other short articles on subjects like cars, fashion, and books.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Counting Devices

At left is a counting device, also called a tasbeeh or tasbih, sold for £4.95 on SimplyIslam.com and commonly found in stores on Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue. The same website sells a set of plastic rosary-like beads for the same purpose: counting prayers.

Acording to the New York Times, of the 13,473 calls the New York counterterrorism hotline (1-888-NYC-SAFE) received in 2007, 644 were worthy of investigation and 45 of those were transit-related.

There were 11 calls about people counting:

"The callers said that the men appeared to be Muslims and that they seemed to be counting the number of people boarding subway trains or the number of trains passing through a station. They feared the men might be collecting data to maximize the casualties in a terror attack."